CRASHES at a busy road junction near Bishops Lydeard could be prevented if a planned roundabout is built, a councillor has said.

Cllr Mike Rigby said Taylor Wimpey was supposed to have built a roundabout on the Station Road and A358 junction by November 2012 when the developer had half-completed a 39-home estate near to the West Somerset Railway.

Cllr Rigby said there had been a number of accidents on that stretch in recent years and his concerns were sparked off again after two people were cut out of their vehicles after a collision between an ASDA delivery van and a silver BMW on Monday (February 24).

Cllr Rigby claimed approving the plans at County Hall and difficulties with some of the consultants employed by Taylor Wimpey were leading to continuing delays getting the roundabout built.

He added: “It should have been finished 15 months ago and it still hasn’t started.

“Many people have lost confidence that it will ever be built and I find the constant delays extraordinarily frustrating.”

Following Monday’s crash, two people were cut out of their vehicles and a woman in her 40s and a man in his 70s were taken to Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton suffering from lower back pain.

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Police said their injuries were not life-threatening or life-changing.

The cause of this week’s crash is not known and Cllr Rigby emphasised he was not blaming Taylor Wimpey for the incident – but claimed the number and severity of collisions at the junction would have been significantly reduced had the roundabout been built.

A spokesman for Taylor Wimpey said it had appointed specialist consultants to design the roundabout and assured residents it was working to get the project underway as soon as possible.

The spokesman added: “These plans had to be thoroughly examined and this process is necessarily rigorous and has taken some time to complete.

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“We are now at the stage where we are working in conjunction with the local authority to finalise several technical details to allow the work to begin. Construction of the roundabout will begin as soon as these details are finalised.”

Somerset County Council said its engineers were working to agree an appropriate design for the junction and work would start after the design is approved.

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